Puma Private Equity leads £11m investment into Aveni to drive AI revolution in financial services
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Puma Private Equity has led the £11 million investment round into Aveni to deliver market-leading generative AI solutions for the UK financial services industry. One of the largest Series A investments in a Scottish business this year, Par Equity and financial services industry leaders: Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide also participated in the round.
Aveni combines globally-recognised AI expertise with extensive financial services experience, to create large language models (LLMs) and AI products designed specifically for the financial services industry (‘vertically aligned’). Aveni is trusted by some of the UK’s leading financial services firms, seeing significant business growth over the past two years, through existing compliance and productivity solutions Aveni Detect & Aveni Assist. This investment will enable Aveni to build on the success of existing products, further establishing its presence across the financial services sector and introducing revolutionary technology through the creation of FinLLM, a financial services specific large language model.
FinLLM is being developed in partnership with new investors Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide. FinLLM is an industry-aligned Large Language Model, aiming to set the standard for the transparent, responsible and ethical adoption of Generative AI across UK financial services. The funding will further establish Aveni’s market leading position in artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for UK financial services businesses, to drive the adoption of generative AI across the sector.
Post investment the team developing FinLLM will be based at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, in a state-of-the-art facility.
“The financial services industry does not need AI models that can quote Shakespeare, it needs AI models that deliver transparency, trust and above all correctness. The way to achieve this is to develop small, highly tuned language models, trained on financial services data, reviewed by financial services experts for specific financial services use cases.
“Generative AI represents the most significant technological evolution of our generation and we’re in the nascent stages of adoption. This presents a significant opportunity for Aveni and our partners. The objective with FinLLM is to set a new standard for the controlled, responsible and ethical adoption of Generative AI, outperforming all other generic models across our selected financial service use cases.”
Joseph Twigg, CEO, Aveni “The impact that Aveni has made in delivering AI solutions to the financial services sector is already significant and there is huge opportunity for growth going forwards. We’re really excited to be backing Joseph, Jamie, Dr. Lexi Birch and the team as they focus on this next phase.
“With Scotland’s position as a prominent tech hub on the rise and with the increased regulatory burden on financial services businesses, we believe that Aveni is in a unique position to solve key challenges faced by the sector.”
Ben Leslie, Investment Director at Puma Growth Partners